BY the 1st of November Geneva was blockaded by the armies of Savoy. The villages around were plundered and burnt. The distress in the city was terrible. Food and fuel were scarcely to be had. The vestments and altar-cloths were taken from the church and cut up into clothes for the poor.
Meanwhile Farel prayed and preached, and Baudichon, who was in the neighborhood of Berne, was looking around for someone who would take up the cause of the persecuted city. “Believe me,” he wrote to the Council of Geneva, “God will deliver us from the hands of our enemies. And do not be dismayed at the long delay. You will see wonders before long, and know how God can help us. Therefore be on your guard, and consent to no terms which are not, in the first place, for the honour of God and His holy gospel, and see to it that the word of God is not bound.”
The council were of like mind with Baudichon. They determined that mass should be said no more. Some of the priests decided that they would leave Geneva—the others were willing to obey the orders of the council. They might remain in the city, on, condition that they dressed themselves as other citizens, and con formed to the laws. They were to be priests no more. And now the deed was done which Farel had so long and so vainly urged upon the council. “It is not enough,” he had told them, “to conform yourselves personally to the gospel. It is right that you should make the public acknowledgment that the mass is idolatry, and that the word of God is to be put in the place of the inventions of men.” The council had, at last, made an open confession of Christ, and they were now to see the deliverance of God.
When Geneva was reduced to the last extremity, a messenger from Berne made his way into the city. “In three days,” he said, “you will see the Castle of the Pays de Vaud in flames. The Bernese are coming!” The Bernese soldiers had been charged to destroy these dens of robbers, to break the images in the towns and villages through which they passed, but spare all men, women, and children, except those who came in arms to meet them.
The Pays de Vaud was in the hands of Berne, and on the 2nd of February, 1536, the victorious army entered Geneva. The city of the gospelers was free!
“In the year 1536, and in the month of February,” wrote Anthony Froment, “Geneva was delivered from her enemies by the providence of God.”
The Duke of Savoy could make no resistance. The King of France was in arms against him. The emperor had deserted his cause.
The Bernese did their work thoroughly and completely. The Castle of Peney was utterly demolished. The Castle of Chillon was taken. The governor had received orders from Savoy to torture first, and then kill the prisoners of Geneva as soon as the castle should be threatened by the Bernese, There were there not only the three officers from Coppet, but the prior of the Convent of St. Victor at Geneva, whose name was Bonivard. He had been one of the first of the Genevans who had risen up to defend the liberties of the city. He had been six years in the dungeons of Chillon. If you go there now, you are still shown the traces on the rocky floor worn by the feet of Bonivard, as he paced round the pillar of the dark vault where he was kept. The Bernese soldiers scarcely hoped to find the prisoners alive. But the governor had been too much afraid of Berne to touch a hair of their heads. With joy and triumph they were brought back to Geneva.
On the 21st of May the Council of Geneva called the citizens together. Having consulted with William Farel, they had determined to put the question to them whether they would now decide for popery, or for the gospel. The Council-General was therefore to speak for the citizens. They met together in the great church, or rather the Cathedral of St. Peter.
Claude Savoye rose and spoke to the assembled crowds. “He reminded them of the flight of the bishop, the arrival of the gospel in Geneva, the glorious deliverance granted to the city;” and then he added, in a voice that was heard all down the nave, “Citizens! Do you desire to live according to the gospel and the word of God, as it is preached to us today? Do you declare that you will have no more masses, images and idols? No more popery? If anyone knows, and wishes to say anything against the gospel that is now preached to us, let him do so.” There was for a while a deep silence. Then, in a loud and solemn voice, one of the citizens answered, “We all with one accord desire, with God’s help, to live in the faith of the holy gospel, and according to God’s word, as it is preached to us.” Then the people held up their hands. and said, “We swear to do so. We will do so with God’s help.”
The meaning of this pledge was not so much that each person, saved or unsaved, undertook to love and serve God, but rather that the citizens of Geneva thus owned that the preaching of the gospel was not forced upon them by the council against their will. It was as much as to say that it was with their full and free consent that the mass was abolished, and the gospel put in the place of the old popish forms and beliefs; that henceforward the word of God was to be to them the rule and standard, not rubrics and canons, decrees of councils, and commands of popes.
The council then ordered an inscription to be fixed over one of the city gates, and afterward over the entrance to the Town Hall, that all men might see what was the faith which was owned by Geneva:
“The tyranny of the Roman Antichrist having been overthrown,
And its superstitions abolished in the year 1535,
The most holy religion of Christ
Having been restored in its truth and purity,
And the Church set in good order,
By a signal favor of God:
The enemy having been repelled and put to flight,
And the city, by a striking miracle, restored to liberty,
The senate and the people of Geneva
Have erected and set up this monument,
In this place,
As a perpetual memorial,
To attest to future ages
Their gratitude to God.”
This inscription was to be to Geneva as the stone of Ebenezer. And we cannot but be thankful that the city which had driven forth Farel as a “heretic and devil” not four years before, was now willing to confess Christ before all men, and to return public thanks to God for the gospel He had sent them by the messenger they had despised and hated. F. B.